Two TV lorry programmes rapped
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• Two television programmes about road haulage have been given the Bent Microphone Award which Aims of Industry presents each month for radio or television programmes which it considers to have shown an unbalanced treatment of industry.
"This might have been called television's hate-the-lorry month," says the citation for the Bent Microphone Award, which is shared by two ITV programmes, First Report on July 10 and World in Action on July 16.
Of the First Report interview with Dr Clifford Sharp of the Economics Department of Leicester University, whose report "Living with the Lorry" concluded that large lorries were necessary, Aims of Industry says: "Personal prejudices positively bristled through the introduction and questioning."
It was suggested in the programme that the endorsement of the large lorry's role was perhaps not quite so surprising since Dr Sharp's report was sponsored "by the people who own and operate the big lorries".
But, says Aims, the opinions expressed were Dr Sharp's own, and he managed to have his research sponsored by the Freight Transport Association and the Road Haulage Association. He pointed out to Robert Kee, the interviewer, that he could have gone to the Social Science Research Council.
The trend of the interview was set by the opening words, says Aims of Industry: "One would think 'one feature of our civilization we could be fairly unanimous about disliking and wanting to replace would be the heavy juggernaut lorry,' but not so: the report said 'we need them, we need them bigger, and we've got to learn to love them'."
This, viewers heard, was perhaps not quite so surprising as it might seem because the report was sponsored "by the people who own and operate the big lorries".
Towards the end, complains Aim's of Industry, he switched to what can only be construed as a suggestion that Dr Sharp had been less than impartial — "in fact, you are sponsored by the very people in whose interest it is to promote more road traffic" and then, with his next-to-last question: "but they paid you for it, presumably?"
ITV's World in Action programme on July 16, was more on hatethe-private-operator lines and is being dealt with in a separate case study.
The programme was one in which lorries were shadowed by television personnel, and the resulting allegations that the haulier's were working their drivers well beyond the legal hours limits drew a sharp protest from the RHA.